31
October 2002
Nanomaterials: Grain of strength
Nanocrystalline metals — with grain sizes of less than 100 nm — have higher tensile strength than coarse-grained and alloyed metals so should have many engineering and biomedical applications, but they tend to be very brittle. A new thermomechanical treatment of copper goes some way towards fixing this problem. Cold rolling at liquid nitrogen temperatures, followed by recrystallization, produces a copper made up of microcrystals in a nanocrystalline matrix. This new bimodal copper can be stretched by 65% of its original length before failure.
High tensile ductility in a nanostructured metal
YINMIN WANG, MINGWEI CHEN, FENGHUA ZHOU & EN MA
Nature
419, 912–915 (2002); doi:10.1038/nature01133
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Materials science: Nanomaterial advantage
RUSLAN VALIEV
Materials may be strong or ductile, but
rarely both at once. The processing of copper into a nanostructure possessing
different-sized grains produces a material that retains its high strength and
ductility under deformation.
Nature 419, 887–889 (2002);
doi:10.1038/419887a
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